Group Questions #1-5 and All Answers #1-5. Finis Groups for Now.

I can only guess that my repetition of the questions have irritated some of you, but my object was to give new people joining the blog an opportunity to think about all of the questions. For you that have suffered, I'm giving the questions and answers in reverse order.

Question #5: Select the correct answer.

Moreno identified:
     1. Three group stages.

     2. Four group stages.
     3. Five group stages.
     4. Seven group stages.
     5. No group stages.

(Justify your answer by telling where you found it. Did he name them? That question may be a trick if he named no group stages.)

A gold star for the correct answer.

Scroll down for the answer.

Answer #5. Four stages.

When a psychodramatist thinks of a psychodrama, the phases of Warm-Up, Action, and Sharing come to mind. But Moreno defined group (called audience) stages in Psychodrama First Volume (1946: 327) as: 

     1.  The amorphous stage.

     2.  The stage of acquaintance.

     3.  The action stage.

     4.  The stage of mutual relations. 

These stages fit nicely into: Warm-Up (amorphous stage and stage of acquaintance), Action (action stage), and Sharing (the stage of mutual relations.) Sharing has always included the termination of the group.

Now compare the dates of publications of Moreno, Yalom, Tuckman and Jensen, and Corey. Moreno is the unaccredited forerunner by 29 years.

Everybody who writes a book on group counseling has to add stages and/or rename them, to avoid appearing as a plagiarist.

Many group counseling courses use both Yalom’s and Corey’s texts. And students suffer the confusion. Most have never heard of Sociometry.

Question #4: True or False:

Moreno said there must be at least five people to have a group. Where did you find this answer?

Answer #4.  Five people make a group.

I apologize for not knowing where I got this answer. My notes indicate Moreno wrote that the minimum group size is five. Did that include the group leader? Where is this information found? Test yourself and try to find where the answers are. Your help will be greatly appreciated.


Question #3: True or False:

Tuckman and Jensen in Group and Organizational Studies (1977) named group stages using the following terms: forming, storming, norming, preforming, and adjourning. (Answer next time.)

Answer #3. True.

Originally Tuckman and Jensen named the first four stages and later revised their writing to five stages. (Bet you didn’t know who used those names for the stages. Neither did I.) Other authors’ usage dropped the adjourning stage. Many licensing and course exams do not include the fifth stage in their questions and most people have never heard of the adjourning stage. Many people attribute Tuckman and Jensen's naming of group stages to either Yalom or Corey.


Question #2: True or False:

Gerald Corey wrote a textbook used widely in group counseling, college courses. He defined four stages in Theory and Practice of Group Counseling (1981,1985,1990 and 1995.)

Answer #2. False, maybe True based on your interpretation.

Accidental semi-trick question. Corey didn’t call two elements, stages. A beginning element was called Pregroup Meeting or Initial Session, and the final element was called the Follow-Up Session. To me they are stages. Corey also named four stages:

     1. Initial Stage—Orientation and Exploration.
     2. Transition Stage—Dealing with Resistance.
     3. Working Stage—Cohesion and Productivity.
     4. Final Stage—Consolidation and Termination.

It’s interesting that Corey named the stages and then indicated what was in each stage followed by an “m” dash (the long dash — ) like Yalom did.


Question #1: True or False:

Irvin D. Yalom in The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy (1975) said that there were four stages to a group’s process later named by others as forming, norming, storming, and preforming.



Answer #1: False

Yalom did research studies that resulted in an informative and well-read book. This led him to define “Three Formative Stages of Groups” as follow:

     1. The Initial Stage—Orientation, Hesitant Participation, Search for
          Meaning.
     2. Second Stage—Conflict, Dominance, Rebellion.
     3. Development of Cohesiveness.